Weird Dreams and Impossible Tasks

[captainsblog]

Someday, when the Pandemic of 20-21 is finally in the past and can be objectively studied, we may have a better sense of just how bad the indirect effects of the virus have been on our intellectual and emotional states. One of the sadder side-effects of the suppression of news about the 1918 flu is that it left relatively little of a history to look back on.  It's not just the direct effects of the virus on the brain- which are very real and if anything, understated in common understanding- but the toll that the anxiety, isolation and disruption are all taking on our collective consciousnesses.

Personally, I am seeing it manifesting in two ways, even though I am very fortunate to be able to continue working and earning a living from it with very little risky contact.  One is in the manifestations of the subconscious in the dream department, while the other turns up, for me and others, during the day in the arrival of what has been designated as the "Impossible Task."

Let's take each of those in that order.

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Overall, I've slept well during this stretch. Mostly, I do; I'll get occasional bouts of insomnia now, but fewer than I used to, and those tended to be related to specific Things coming up with court, finances or something similar.  The bigger distractions during the night now are getting up to pee and having assorted four-legged life forms hogging covers or, in the case of Zoey the good cat, bashing the venetian blinds at 3-5 a.m. to get human attention.

But the dreams have become more vivid than ever. They often take me back to places in my past I've either lived or spent a lot of time in: Rochester, Ithaca, Long Island, Binghamton, even the UK.  They'll be mishmashes of people I knew in some other place at a totally different time. Often former cars of mine get involved: I have a recurring one where I found my first bought-myself car, a puke-green 10-year-old 1971 Ford Maverick three-speed I drove from Cornell senior year into my first law school semester; apparently I found it in a junkyard in Rochester, bought it back and got it running, and stored it in my mother-in-law's condo garage to use in emergencies.

That's nothing, though, compared to one from last week. When I was awakened for walkies by Pepper on Sunday morning, I was just finishing a dream in which one of my longest-time friends was finding out that he was about to become a daddy again. This would no doubt come as quite the surprise to his 60-ish-year-old wife, the surprise resulting in the arrival of either a team of lawyers or one of holy men, depending on whether she was the actual repository of the child.

And no, I am not saying who.

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The other phenomenon is one I run into from time to time, but it was a friend who I thought was experiencing it.  She's been going through quite the rough patch, and posted a photo of a rather disorganized room of her house, bemoaning her inability to get up enough get-up-and-go to get it cleaned up to at least the point of seeming under control.  Many friends offered condolences and attagirls, but Eleanor and one other friend were the only ones to offer practical suggestions as to how to deal with the problem.

Me? I resisted the impulse to suggest using a flamethrower, but commented more constructively that it sounded like a textbook description of what has been defined in recent past as a symptom of various mental states known as the "Impossible Task:"

Coined by M. Molly Backes on Twitter in 2018, the term describes how it feels when a task seems impossible to do, no matter how easy it should theoretically be. Then, as time passes and the task remains unfinished, the pressure builds while the inability to do it often remains.

“Necessary tasks become overwhelming, and guilt and shame about the incomplete task only make the task feel larger and more difficult,” Amanda Seavey, licensed psychologist and founder of Clarity Psychological Wellness, tells Healthline.

So, why do some people experience the impossible task while others may be baffled by its existence?

“It’s related to a lack of motivation, which is both a symptom and a side effect of some antidepressants,” Aimee Daramus, PsyD, tells Healthline.

“You might also find something similar, though for different reasons, in people with traumatic brain injuries, traumatic stress disorders (including PTSD), and dissociative disorders, which involve a disturbance of memory and identity,” Daramus says. “Mainly, though, it’s how people with depression describe the difficulty that they have doing very simple tasks.”

For me, when one of these hits, it can be completely benign in terms of requiring energy, sometimes mental, sometimes physical.  One that is often mentioned is the (you'd think) simple task of getting laundry done. On the washing end, this is one that tends to enforce its own limits: when you're out of clean socks or need to throw a hand towel in your gym bag, it's wash or shop, and my innate hatred of retail gets me motivated. But once washed and dried, clean wash can sit in a basket for days with no similar motivating factor. It's helped to recognize it as an "impossible task" and admit the neurosis behind it to get me off the beam and finally get it done- usually in way less time than I spent brooding about NOT being "able" to do it.

The other is the conflict between Impossible Tasking and Routine.  With so much normalcy taken away, I think it helps to have at least some things to do, watch, listen to, whatever, at the same time each day or week.  Pepper is way better at this than I have ever been, and in the past year or so she has completely trained me to wake up within a minute or two of 7:30 a.m. without needing an alarm, to complete the morning routine of breakfast and her feeding, and to get her out on her morning walk no matter what the weather, with Sunday being the special day to meet her frens.  We're not much for takeout food, but one particular pizza joint is a Friday night tradition, and one Wendy's meal a week for lunch on Saturdays almost always follows it.

And then there's time- as in recording what I have done in the previous week. I'm not a Big Law wage slave expected to bill 2,000-plus hours a year, but a decent portion of my income results from sending time-based bills to clients (the rest being flat fee or percentage based), so it's become a weekend exercise for many years to sit down and do it.

"It" consists of starting with notes from the week, then going through the records of incoming and (far fewer) outgoing calls and text messages on my mobile, emails sent and received, copies of correspondence I've sent- another tradition going back to the 90s if not longer is still maintaining a "chron" file of backup paper copies of all letters I send in a three-ring binder- and records in Word of when I created and revised documents.  Those dives update the notes, which then turns into a handwritten draft, usually consuming three or four blank sides of letter-sized scrap paper in a bizarre only-I'd-understand code.  Most of those entries are destined to be typed into a laptop-based software program I've used in one form or another since the 1980s (updated to what I now use- its kickass Windows version from 2006, baby!), but any I do for the Rochester office are separately coded to go into the online and completely different Quickbooks program they use.  Depending on how busy I was during the week and the nature of the busy-ness- a fullday trial, back when we used to do those, took way less time to record than 40 different phone calls and whatnots for 30 different clients in the same time period- the actual entry into the programs is the quicker portion, maybe an hour or two at most.

Unless it's Impossible.  Then, the blank sides of the scrap paper just snarl at me and go, I dare ya! It's infinitely easier as a weekend task  because, derp, I'm not working while trying to do it!  For some reason, this weekend it just escaped me, but I began it at the end of the day Sunday, and when a client begged out of an office appointment due to snow today, I resolved to just stay home until it was DONE.... and, thank gods, despite interruptions during the process because, derp, I was working while trying to do it!, it is not only done through last week but I knocked off yesterday and today as well, so this weekend's task is already 40 percent less Impossible.

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If you hadn't noticed, I've now kept up the everyday routine of posting Something here through the first third of this month. It's good to realize that has never turned into an Impossible Task- or produced any particular weird dreams as a result.

That I know of;)

Comments

I think maybe...

[dauntless_heart]

...decluttering my office is an impossible task.

Everyone leaves their stuff in there and it just never ends, so I just remove stuff sometimes to the back desk and keep working.

If we had clients entering the office more these days I'd be on it, but we don't. And some days it feels like I can never get it decluttered.